Seriously, if you are going to pour a concrete pad outside your barn shaped outbuilding, you might want to warn the concrete truck driver about that old septic tank in your backyard.
As a disclaimer, this is my brother, the Bus’s, house up in Ozark Mountain country and he had no idea of the existence of that septic tank behind his newly purchased home.
But, man, I bet that 20′ x 20′ pad was really expensive.
img src=Jim Lee
Hooniverse Weekend Edition: Last Call: There's a What Down There?
About
-
I also had no idea there is a shelf life for concrete on the concrete truck.
I am just so glad the back wheels didn't bust the top of the septic tank.
The wrecker driver wanted me to pay him the $300 tow bill.
Fortunately, the safety guy for the concrete company came up and told the driver he was on retainer with the concrete company.
What. A. Mess.
http://bus-plunge.blogspot.com/2007/11/i-didnt-kn…
http://bus-plunge.blogspot.com/2007/11/cow-tippin…
http://bus-plunge.blogspot.com/2007/11/two-kids-j…-
Here in Texas, when we've had extreme heat in the summer, concrete mixers will add ice to the concrete mix, to slow down the curing, so that the concrete makes it to the jobsite without hardening.
-
I've seen concrete trucks dump their loads on the side of the road in emergencies to prevent the stuff from setting up in the mixer.
And yeah, having an old, unknown septic tank is not unusual. When a septic tank is taken out of service, many local codes require that the tank be pumped out, the lids broken and finally the tank filled in with sand or rock. Down here in South Florida there is another, even potentially worse problem for homeowners – older homes sometimes used underground tanks for fuel oil and those tanks were often forgotten when the homes were converted to electric or gas heat. Fire codes required that the disused tanks be removed or filled in, but that was frequently neglected. However, the homeowner can still be liable for environmental cleanup costs if the abandoned tank leaks and the groundwater is polluted by the fuel.-
Before we had a sewer system here in Tombstone, the houses all had cesspools, and some places, like the old high school, even dumped sewage into old mine shafts. Every so often somebody will have me come to their back yard and look at the "mine shaft" they found back there, and it's invariably an old cesspool with a concrete lid with old junk like wrought iron bedframes embedded in it for rebar, which they didn't have back in the day.
-
There was a story in Seattle a few years ago about a fuel oil delivery driver that went to the wrong house. He started pumping into what he thought was an active tank. The tank had been removed when the house was converted to another heat source. Needless to say, the occupants were not happy having several hundred gallons of fuel pumped into their basement. The house was rendered uninhabitable because of the fumes (even after it was all pumped back out). The had to strip it to the bones and redo the whole interior.
-
-
-
OLR, did your bro know about the septic tank?
-
Looks like he let Henry do it!
-
Shit.
-
I fear for us.
Leave a Reply